Select a non-UK company and obtain its latest annual financial reporting documents.

Select a non-UK company and obtain its latest annual financial reporting documents.

Analyse those documents with respect to:

(a) the breakdown between mandatory and voluntary content and their respective implications for impression management;

(b) signs of impression management in the voluntary material (narratives, graphs, pictures/photographs;

(c)  a possible classification of the company’s accounting system within one of the major classifications that you have examined.

Refer to relevant regulation and research.

Up to about 2500 words.  The submission must be word-processed.

(a) Mandatory and voluntary content

Use the template from Workshop 1 as a reasonable guide.  State whether there is just an Annual Report or both a Report and a summary document of some sort.  Present your results as a table as discussed in the workshop, showing page numbers of mandatory/voluntary and narrative/visual/numbers, and arriving at total percentages for each.  Provide commentary that considers the differences between the two types of disclosure (mandatory and voluntary) and their forms (narrative etc) and their relative importance for impression management and why.  Apply this to what you find in your chosen company.

(b) Signs of impression management

Use Lectures 8A and 8B & Workshop 7 on Communication Issues to consider the narratives (focus on Chairman’s Statement), graphs (focus on financial highlights) and pictures.  Briefly analyse some this material using some of the tools we discussed in classes (eg. readability of narratives, selection & manipulation of graphs, impression management through photographs).

(c) Possible classification

Then go on to consider how you might classify the accounting system used by the company, guided by Lecture 7A slides and Workshop 6.   Take a look at:

• The accounts, especially the balance sheet and notes Be aware that:IFRS may be required only for ‘group accounts’ – group accounts are the consolidated accounts prepared by multinational companies who have many subsidiaries in many countries

The ‘parent company accounts’ may be required to be prepared under national        standards, not IFRS

• Accounting policies statement (usually Note 1)
• Audit report

From these, you can work out (1) the institutional, legal and regulatory background guided by Lecture 7A slides.

For each of (a) to (c) above you should refer to (1) relevant regulation, (2) textbook material and (3) research papers we have discussed in class.

Maintain a reasonable balance between the three sections, although marks will not be specifically awarded per section.

If you wish to achieve a top grade, then the better your argument is structured and informed by EVIDENCE FROM YOUR ANNUAL REPORT plus additional reading, the better a mark you will be awarded.